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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28569207">Heal</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/angelkat/pseuds/angelkat'>angelkat</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>The Wee Compendium of Sweet Ginger [13]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Adventures of Puss in Boots (Cartoon)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Amor Vincit Omnia, Drama, F/M, Sickfic, content warning: vomiting</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 04:00:54</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>6,008</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28569207</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/angelkat/pseuds/angelkat</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>After a witch—also his ex—tricks Puss into taking a bite of her poisoned apple, Puss is struck by a fatal illness. San Lorenzo’s in a panic trying to cure him before time runs out, but it’s Dulcinea who discovers that the spell is tied to another, older form of illness…one only she could heal.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Puss in Boots/Dulcinea</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>The Wee Compendium of Sweet Ginger [13]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1571299</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Heal</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>13</strong>
</p><p>
  <em>heal</em>
</p>
<hr/><p>After Pajuna finished serving five plates of dinner, refilling ten bottles of leche, and whipping up a cocktail of lemon and whisky for a mildly depressed and severely black-eyed Señor Igualdemontijo, the bartender wondered if Dulcinea was actually just Puss in Boots donning a disguise if the fact that the lassie was <em>still </em>prattling about vaguely the same topic for the last couple of hours was any indication.</p><p>“--because ever since <em>she </em>came into this town, she’s been hogging Puss’ attention <em>every single minute of the day</em> and the fact that she’s actually <em>succeeding </em>only indicates one thing: that she must be a witch. She <em>must</em>. I’ve read something about witches in the book, somewhere on page thirty-nine, Eames GO GET IT! Oh wait a minute <em>never mind</em>, I remember it--it said there <em>‘When a witch crosses your path, kiss their hand to curb their wrath.’</em> See?! <em>That</em> smells like bewitchery right there, this is <em>exactly</em> what the book is warning us about--Elisa is <em>dangerous</em> for Puss, and we must find a way to break him out of her charms, and kick her out of the town, and make sure she <em>never</em> comes back again<em>--</em>”</p><p>“Um,” Eames said, raising his hand like a student in a classroom from where he sat in a table from which he poured over <em>The Wee Compendium</em> himself, as duly instructed. “I just consulted page thirty-nine, like you said, but <em>actually</em> what it says here is: <em>‘When you kiss a witch’s hand, she’ll be a fairy of the land’--</em>”</p><p>Dulcinea whirled around to incinerate him with her wrathful gaze.</p><p>
  <em>“THAT BOOK LIES!”</em>
</p><p>It was a wonder how Dulcinea was still going strong even after rambling continuously like a paranoid lunatic for the past half hour. Pajuna heaved an exasperated sigh, reaching for a damp cloth to wipe her glasses with for the umpteenth time. The soothing feeling of cloth sliding against glass helped Pajuna mute out the cat’s incessant yabbering, a necessary precaution since her ears were starting to ring of tinnitus. The only evidence to counter her Dulcinea-is-actually-just-Puss-theory was that Dulcinea wouldn’t stop bashing that new cat in town, who, surprise surprise, Puss actually liked, because he wouldn’t stop being around with her for the last couple of days.</p><p>Her name was Elisa, and it wasn’t much of a mighty leap of deduction to conclude that Dulcinea was seething with jealousy.</p><p>Pajuna took a startled step backward when Dulcinea slammed her paws down her counter so she can look up at the cow with her intense and fiery glare.</p><p>“I mean, come ON!” she screamed to her face.</p><p>“Gah!” said Pajuna, catching the glass she’d been wiping just in time before it hit the floor and shattered.</p><p>“Elisa’s too <em>nice,” </em>Dulcinea continued, unhindered. “<em>Nothing</em> is too nice, and anything that is is fake. <em>Fake</em>, I tell you!”</p><p><em>“Dulcinea,”</em> Pajuna said after barely managing to gather back her traumatized wits, “Quit twattling around! Yer scarin’ away ma’ customers! ”</p><p>The cow tactfully refrained from saying that Dulcinea was also scaring <em>her</em> away.</p><p>“What?! Me?! <em>I</em> am too nice?! No I’m not! I’m screaming at you right now. I am <em>not.</em> <em>too. nice</em>. In fact, I’m even about to say some <em>very </em>cruel words in my next sentence!” Dulcinea’s warning rang with the heavy tones of a very serious threat. “I,” her entire body trembled like the earth foreboding a volcanic eruption, “am not a <em>stinking</em>,” it was with every pause that she jabbed a finger at Pajuna as if she was the reason for everybody’s suffering, “horrendous <em>fraud</em>, like that, that--” and with astounding strength she finally hauled the vile word out her mouth--</p><p>“--that <em>HUSSY!</em>”</p><p>Pajuna gasped. “Settle <em>down</em> lass! There are <em>children</em> here listenin’--”</p><p>“<em>Tell me</em>, Pajuna.” And suddenly Dulcinea was at her collar with her paws flat against the sides of her face so Pajuna couldn’t look away from that mad and trembling blue gaze. Her voice was absent; Dulcinea was hissing out every word, making sure each stabbed like an icicle. “Tell me <em>honestly</em>. These people around me are staring at me like I’m crazy. You…you don’t think I’m crazy, do you? Do you? There’s just something <em>completely</em> untrustworthy about that Elisa and it’s not just me, right? <em>Right?!</em>”</p><p>Pajuna was honestly getting a little freaked out. “Ah,” she said. “Elisa’s--”</p><p>“<em>Exactly</em>,” and she was nodding, frantic eyes wide with madness, her nodding as hysterical as that of a cheated wife trying to convince herself her husband’s affair <em>wasn’t </em>true, “<em>exactly</em>, that’s what I thought too. We should do something, Pajuna. You should help me do <em>something</em>--”</p><p>Pajuna sighed. “Lass.”</p><p>“Oh, I know! Maybe we can kick her out using a spell, yes, oh definitely that’ll work. I’ll ask Artephius, maybe the Duchess--”</p><p>“LASS!”</p><p>And finally, Dulcinea stopped being such a hyperactive pain in the rear, shutting up and looking up at her bovine friend with startled blue eyes.</p><p>Pajuna once again heaved out a sigh.</p><p>“Are ye sure,” she finally said, slowly and surely, carefully and measurably, unwilling to smack the reality to her feline friend’s face, but feeling like it was the right thing to do, “that ye aren’t just…ya know. Jealous?”</p><p>The highland cow didn’t know what reaction she expected from the usually meek and modest townsgirl--maybe vehement denial, but…</p><p>Dulcinea deflating like a pricked balloon certainly wasn’t it.</p><p>“You’re right,” she said, that once-fiery tone reduced to nothing but a quiet whisper. “You’re right, I…I <em>am</em> jealous, I <em>am</em>, and…and…” She took a seat on one of the stools before the counter as if her own feet couldn’t support her.</p><p>“Look,” the bartender resolved, her own emotions swinging from tremendously freaked out to something like pity. Even Pajuna could see that Puss was just being coerced by that Elisa feline for him to spend time with her, but Dulcinea was too clouded by her understandable bout of jealousy to see past the fact that he’d been spending his time with her way too much for the past couple of days.</p><p>“Hows ‘bout a drink?” she proffered. “Things always take a turn for the better after one good swig of leche. It’s on the house.”</p>
<hr/><p>Things took a turn for the worse after one good swig of leche, even if it was on the house.</p><p>Five minutes later, shivers crawled down everyone’s spines when they heard an ominous, rage-driven cackle from outside the cantina that sounded suspiciously like Elisa’s. They--Pajuna especially--began to regret that they ever dismissed Dulcinea’s claims as a jealous crackpot’s delusions, because she was apparently correct about Elisa being an evil seductive witch.</p><p>“HA!” that very distinctly witchy voice said. “<em>Finally</em>, my dearest DARLING Puss in Boots--you know what it is like to <em>quiver</em> in the cold of a loveless existence!”</p><p>Dulcinea took off from her stool and dashed out of the cantina with her sword ready, only to find Puss desperately trying to find a post or a wall to lean against, his paw clawing at something in his stomach.</p><p>“Puss?! <em>Puss!</em>” Dulcinea immediately ran to his aid just as he was about to topple to the floor, hooking his arm around her shoulder to keep him upright. “Puss, are you alright? Where does it hurt, what can I--”</p><p>“Dulcinea,” he croaked, “I was a fool. I was a fool--”</p><p>He hacked out a series of dry and aggravated coughs that sounded like saws digging through wood and must have felt every bit as painful. Dulcinea panicked as he fell apart in her arms, going limp like a vegetable once he’d wracked the illness out with a bloody vomit onto the cobblestones. She was at a terrible loss on what to do; and so was everyone else who’d run out of the cantina and gasped at the sight of their town hero, clinging weakly to Dulcinea and desperately panting for breath like a fish plucked out of the water.</p><p>Dulcinea turned her head to face Elisa, who was still cackling like the witch she was as she lifted up the air with a single gesture of her cinnamon-furred arm. Elisa’s beautiful feline features transformed into that of an old, wrinkly woman with an ugly wart waging war from the tip of her long and curvy nose. Her black, tattered robe billowed about her bony frame as wind and dust and dark purple smoke circled her like a hurricane would circle the eye of the storm. The children screamed; Esme burst into tears in Zapata’s shoulder; Eames ran back to the cantina to cower under a table; Artephius jumped into the Duchess’ waiting arms; the whole town descended into chaos.</p><p>And all the while, Elisa cackled.  </p><p>“What did you do to him?” Dulcinea demanded, not letting go of Puss’ paw as he lay on the floor, still weakened from his latest coughing fit.  </p><p>The witch feigned shock. “Wha--what did <em>I</em> do? What did <em>I DO? HE</em> stole my heart! The red apple’s poison,” she hurled a bitten red apple in everyone else’s general direction and everyone else scrambled out of the apple’s trajectory as if it was a bomb, “serves him <em>right!</em>”</p><p>“I am innocent!” Puss growled weakly, his green eyes, though clouded with illness, burning as fiercely as they ever had. “I have never seen you before in my life!”</p><p>“I am Elisa--”</p><p>
  <em>“You told me that!”</em>
</p><p>“--the wicked witch, or shall I say the former fairest fairy, of the North,” she finished with a simper. “There. <em>Surely </em>now you remember me, my darling dearest sweet?”</p><p>Puss blinked as if clearing the fog from his eyes. “…Elisa? From the North? With their infamous curtains of light?” he said eventually, recognition now dawning in his features. “You mean <em>that </em>Elisa? But you were a beautiful fairy when I met you! What happened to you that you became…<em>so</em>…”</p><p>Lest he incite the already wrathful witch, he tactfully refrained from finishing that sentence.</p><p>“Wait,” said Dulcinea, before any of them continued to speak. “You two knew each other before?”</p><p>“...Yes,” Elisa said sullenly, and suddenly the fire from her voice was gone. The hysteria drained from her expression and was replaced by a fresh refilling of heartache and sorrow, and for a moment she looked more like a grieving widow than an evil witch. “Yes, I knew of Puss in Boots. We were happy for a while. We were happy <em>together</em>.” Then her features, which have begun to soften like the pearly skin of a baby as she reminisced the happier days of her past, sharpened back to its previous ugliness, wrinkles and warts aging her for a hundred years in a single flare of righteous anger. “And one day, right after I proposed we get married, I found out that he TOOK OFF, and <em>I NEVER HEARD FROM HIM AGAIN!”</em></p><p>Dulcinea would have rolled her eyes if not for the fact that Puss’ involuntary shuddering in her arms wasn’t scaring her out of her wits.</p><p>“<em>Elisa</em>,” Puss managed to bite out in spite of the sharp pain needling him from his stomach and the trembling fit his body was trying to make him suffer from, “Do not be ridiculous! Y-you and, and I…” He stifled down yet another cry of pain. “We are impossible--I am a <em>cat</em>, and <em>you are a human gir--</em>”</p><p>“What I am, my dearest DARLING sweet,” she spat back out with steaming vitriol, “is a <em>shapeshifter. </em>Now I know you’re just looking for excuses to get rid of me!”</p><p>Puss had just been about to answer to that in as calmly a manner as he could in his weak and trembling body, standing up and pushing Dulcinea’s insistent support away from him, but it was the moment he cut contact from her when he recoiled, suddenly robbed of all breath and word as his stomach exploded in a pain that made getting run through with a sword feel like a papercut. He fell right back into Dulcinea’s arms when she frantically tried to catch him, the San Lorenzans gathering worriedly around the two of them although everyone looked unsure whether or not they should, given that none of them even knew what to do. He clutched Dulcinea’s shoulders, his paws crude and rough and trembling, but she didn’t utter a sound of complaint as she helped him settle himself against her, his chin hooked onto her shoulder and her paw running soothing motions down his back even as he desperately clawed on her own. She could only imagine that what he was going through was a million times more in magnitude than the secondhand emotional pain he was causing her right now, and she knew she’d gladly go through this same exact physical suffering if it only meant relieving him of this pain. He continued to breathe, but it was ragged and stuttering like the sputtering of one of the Duchess’ old and decrepit magical engines, and judging by the shallowness and rapidness of each weakly and painfully drawn breath, it wasn’t difficult--factually--to conclude that he won’t be breathing much longer.</p><p>“I feel cold,” he whispered, and indeed she could feel his cold breath ripple across the fur on her neck as he dredged up the words before she moved to him lay down the floor, where he’d be more comfortable standing up. As comfortable as he could be with this unknown pain seizing at every muscle of his body. “B-bring me inside. Please--” And he flinched and gripped his stomach before he could say anything more, writhing on the floor and screaming and letting the pain take a long pass at his frail and already weakened form.</p><p>“I know.” She didn’t. She chose to say it, anyway. “I know. I’m right here,” she whispered back, unable to keep the tears from falling at the utterly <em>terrible</em> sight and sound of him writhing and screaming in pain. She tried to stomp down that frightened squeak that threatened to bubble out of her throat when she touched his paw and felt it burn the skin under her fur as if it was <em>ice</em>. It only frightened her to see the tips of his fingers turn blue under the thin coating of fur when she tried to see through it by caressing the fur back. Puss reached out a paw to stop her from her frantic caressing, (if one could call it that,) enclosing her paw in both of his and prompting her to look him in the eyes. Eventually, he closed them, officially passing out from the pain and going limp and--thankfully--continuing to breathe shallowly in her arms.</p><p>“Please,” Dulcinea eventually managed, tears brimming from her eyes, though they did not quite fall (yet), looking up so Elisa could see the pain in her expression. “Please…give him the antidote. I’ll give you whatever you want, whatever treasure from the treasure house, <em>I’ll be your familiar</em>, I’ll serve you however long you want--”</p><p>She felt him weakly squeeze her paw as if in protest, but she only squeezed back, firm in her desire to do anything at all if it meant saving him.</p><p>“Anything,” she continued boldly, “I’ll give you anything. Just forgive him whatever he did to you in the past and…and take it out on me. Just <em>heal him.</em>”</p><p>Elisa stared her down.</p><p>“Earlier, you were just prattling about how <em>I</em> am a vile witch,” she pointed out, her voice so full of rasp as if the words as she drew them out scraped against the sandpaper walls of her very throat. Dulcinea flinched at the accusation, unable to deny the truth of it. Elisa continued to speak in that ancient, raggedy voice.</p><p>“What many don’t know is that witches are fairies whose hearts have been frozen solid.” She arched an ashen eyebrow at Dulcinea’s direction. “And such was what he did to me, sweet, naive, <em>gullible </em>Dulcinea. I became the wicked witch of the North because <em>he </em>broke my heart, left nothing in my chest but a cold empty cave where it once beat with life. Now I am nothing but a dead shell.” Her features sharpened, tone flared angrier. “And I intend to save many from that fate, fully knowing that this man is one of those who give women like us little value. I am saving <em>you</em>, my dearest <em>darling</em> sweet, from the same fate he’d befallen me, until he learns to truly love someone, until that someone learns to love him truly in return, he has to <em>die.</em>”</p><p>Felina’s sake, Dulcinea just <em>wanted </em>the antidote, not a godsdarned lecture about who gets to love and who gets to die!</p><p>“But <em>please</em>! You can’t just let him--”</p><p>With a gesture of her arms lifting her white, stringy hair heavenward, Elisa, the wicked witch of the infamous North, disappeared in a puff of deep purple smoke, and the storm she’d stirred died in her absence.</p>
<hr/><p>It was warm. The last thing he’d remembered before falling into oblivion was the cold, the frigid, stinging cold, and him shivering in it so violently he was unable to make himself make even just the slightest move so he could clutch the blanket tighter around himself, so waking up covered in the complete, loving embrace of warmth left him vaguely surprised. He looked around, saw the crackling fireplace, saw, but not quite heard the crackling, because there was something else his subconscious was currently affixed to. Someone was humming a very familiar lullaby.</p><p>“There there, my little pequeño,” were the tender words his Mama Imelda spoke to him as she continued to cradle him against her bosom. She looked down at him with her soft hazel eyes as she tucked the blanket he’s already covered in to further secure it in place. “Do not move too much, my brave fighter. You have lost too much blood with that thirty foot fall you took. You may be a cat, and I hear cats always land on their feet, but you must know that you are still <em>my </em>kitten, and always will be, no matter how old you get. I encourage you never to test your limits.”</p><p>He adjusted his position as she spoke, but he only flinched in pain as a sharp stab needled him from his stomach. He was unable to restrain an anguished mew in the process.</p><p>“Shh, shh, shh, shh,” Imelda soothed, cuddling him closer to her breast and making sure every sway of her cradling was as gentle as she could sway him. “I know, pequeño. I know. It’s all going to be alright. Your mother is here. I’m right here, pequeño. Shh…”</p><p>“I am not worth it,” he blurted out, tears blurring his vision as soon as he dragged the words out of his tongue. Images flickered before his mind; he could remember now what had happened when he took that aforementioned thirty-foot fall, and that was because he and Humpty had been trying to steal a merchant’s bag of coins and he’d had to resort to sprinting over the rooftops and dodging the San Ricardo Guards’ flying spears to escape both prison and the Comandante’s ire. He could admit now that it was one of his and Humpty’s less planned-out stunts, and they should never have probably went with it in the first place. Though he’d always adapted a loose attitude towards the morality of thieving--considering he himself had committed to living the life of a thief--no matter what he did, no matter how light he made of his crimes, no matter how much he told his conscience to go jump off a cliff and burn in hell every time an item in the market sparkled far too brightly for him to neglect, he never could get away from that harrowing knowledge that he’d disappointed his mama again, never could wash off that ever-living guilt clinging to his fur like a thick gunk of tar.</p><p>Imelda stopped short. “What did you say?”</p><p>“I am not worth it,” he repeated, swallowing thickly and ascertaining his words did not tremble. He was not some sort of child who needed to be comforted that none of it was true, because he was old enough to know that scrap of comfort would be a lie. “I deserve every bit of pain from that fall. I brought it upon myself. I do not deserve being cared for. I should not be your responsibility--”</p><p>“Oh shut it, shut it, <em>shut it</em>, not another blasphemous word from that mouth of yours, young man!” Imelda said, her heartache writ in every wrinkle lining her face, in every crease that flickered at the corner of her eyes, a thousand emotions rolling like waves over the vast ocean that was her face in every split second, every bit the open and tender and caring and loving mother that she was.</p><p>“My love for you is unconditional,” she affirmed him before he could even start thinking of another self-deprecating remark. “And no matter who you are, who you shall become, you will always be the lifeblood that gives my heart reason to beat. <em>Rest</em>, my pequeño. Rest.”</p><p>But he was unable to hear his mother’s reassurances that he was, and always will be, someone worth loving, because by the time she had finished speaking, he had already long fallen into a fever-induced haze of sleep.</p><p>Which was why it was easy for him to return to his and his brother’s vices a week after he’d healed.</p>
<hr/><p>It had been five whole hours since the Elisa incident, which meant that the adults involved were all still wide awake in the ungodly hours past midnight.</p><p>Pajuna, albeit reluctantly, had closed the cantina a couple of hours ago after a million reassurances from Dulcinea that she’d be alright and she’d be able to take care of Puss on her own, that no, it wasn’t too much, that yes, Pajuna <em>should</em> go to sleep after spending yet another whole day tending bar, (and by tending bar she meant tending to San Lorenzo’s breakfasts, lunches and dinners,) and that she shouldn’t worry because Puss <em>will </em>be fine tomorrow and demanding his leche again by the time she got back to work.</p><p>But that didn’t mean she was able to drift asleep.</p><p>Señora Zapata had to put the children to bed eventually, which was not an easy feat considering none of them were in the mood to just pretend everything was fine when they had to listen to their hero and their role model and their best friend continuously trying to retch the contents of his stomach in the very <em>not</em> soundproof outhouse situated nearby the cantina. The children kept waking up right when Señora Zapata thought they’d officially drifted off to sleep, and she’d even had to go shake Toby awake from the nightmare that was making him scream.</p><p>She later learned that Toby had been dreaming of waking up to Puss’ corpse.</p><p>Artephius and the Duchess were hard at work in Owlberto, extracting drop after drop of poison they could squeeze out of the red apple Elisa had taunted Puss to bite, testing drop after drop to find out what type of poison it even <em>was</em>, and when that failed they tested it against every type of antidote they could conjure. There’d been no news from them throughout all the hours they’ve worked in without a single break.</p><p>Except for one.</p><p>“The only magical signature we could trace,” the Duchess had reported, her voice dipping into the grave tones only people experiencing a deep despair should ever be allowed to use, “indicates that the poison is designed to kill on the first sunrise from the time of intake. Dulcinea--”</p><p>Dulcinea had collapsed back into her chair after she’d heard that news. “The first sunrise from the time of intake,” she said, her voice void of emotion. “That’s only a few hours from now. You’re basically saying Puss could be dead in the morning.”</p><p>They were quiet for a long moment.</p><p>“We still don’t know how to cure it,” the Duchess was eventually compelled to say.</p><p>Now, they weren’t stupid. They had all clearly heard Elisa’s last words: <em>Until he learns to truly love someone, until that someone learns to love him truly in return, he has to die</em>. So he doesn’t <em>have </em>to die, <em>if</em> they could find a fix to the curse’s first two conditions. Technically, they know <em>what</em> should be accomplished. The question is <em>how</em>, so until that can be answered, the town’s mages were left trying to find a workaround. Artephius said there can always be workarounds when it came to poisons.  </p><p>And, yes. Dulcinea had already tried. But unlike the numerous stories she had read about the true love’s kisses, it didn’t work.</p><p>It didn’t.</p><p>Puss only opened his eyes as Dulcinea parted from her lips’ touch from his, and said, with a hoarse chuckle, ‘You are as sweet as your name suggests, Dulci…<em>ah!</em>’ He had winced and groaned from a pang of pain piercing his stomach, and Dulcinea was left with a hollow feeling in her chest as she helped him grapple with the pain while she was suddenly struck with a new one of her own.</p><p>She loved him. She <em>did</em>. But if he still wasn’t healed after her act of love, it can only mean that he…that he didn’t…that…</p><p>She was so selfish for being hurt about such a small matter when he was on the brink of death. In the here and now, she looked at the Duchess. “Please,” she begged, not caring to hear about anything else that wasn’t about Puss getting better. <em>“</em><em>Heal</em><em> him.”</em></p><p>“We’re doing our best.” And with that, the Duchess moved to leave the room, drawing back the hand that she’d rested onto Dulcinea’s shoulder in a vain attempt to reassure her that everything will be alright.  </p><p>Of course, Dulcinea had it the worst. Much has happened in the past five hours to drain her of her spirit, and she’d spent the bigger half of it running soothing motions across Puss’ back as he vomited the contents of his stomach in the outhouse. It was not an experience she was willing to reexperience anytime soon. Or <em>ever</em>. That feeling of helplessness paralyzed her and made her feel like a piece of turd. That she could do nothing but run useless caresses down her best friend’s back and give him cooing sounds and reassurances that likely just went through one ear and exited out the other as he retched and tore the walls of his alimentary canal until it was blood he started vomiting, that was not an experience she would wish for even her worst enemy to have to relive.</p><p>“He was vomiting for the last two hours, Artephius,” she’d told the alchemist in her desperateness for answers. “Wouldn’t he have already ejected the poison out of his body somehow?”</p><p>“That’s the thing about magical poison, Dulcinea. The poison isn’t in the poison itself--it’s in the magic. We’ll just have to figure out how to break it.”</p><p>The other half of those five hours, she’d spent by his bedside. After his little vomiting spree, and with the knowledge that the only reason he’d even stopped was not because he’d already purged the illness but because he’d nothing left to disgorge, she’d insisted that he spend the night on her bed, where she could look after him more thoroughly. There, she could be in closer proximity to things she might need to care for him, such as her food storage or her kitchen, so she could cook him some porridge if he ever decided he was hungry (but that was wishful thinking.) He was thin and frail and weak and heaving shallow breaths and <em>the poison was progressing too quickly</em>, and it worried her deeply that with every crawl of every second the breath he’d just inhaled would be his very last.</p><p>She braved it through, she braved it through like she always had, feigning smiles when offered a sympathetic pat on the back or feigning an okay state of mind when asked if she’s alright or mustering reassurances that everything <em>will</em> be alright when someone sought it out from her. Naturally, the San Lorenzans knew to seek her out in times of crisis like this, being the ever cheerful, ever sunny optimist that she’d always have been, that everyone assumed she’d always will be, but right now she felt too drained to even muster a pretense of optimism that she couldn’t bring herself to feel, no matter how hard she squeezed her heart to extract the tiniest drop out of it.</p><p>No. Forcing herself to feel optimistic when Puss was about to die--it made sense that she would break under the pressure.</p><p>So break she did.</p><p>She sobbed openly on Puss’ bedside, because if Artephius and the Duchess were right about their magical tests, then he could be dead any minute now. She could see a faint grayish light blurring the stars from the horizon, and she knew it must be the sun preparing his entrance into his domain on this side of the sky. She wished it would never rise again, she wished it would be night forever--she’d be willing to plunge this side of the globe to darkness for eternity if it only meant to heal him, to bring him back to her again. For him, she’d do <em>everything</em>, even consider evil necessary if it ever came to that.</p><p>“I am not worth it.”</p><p>Dulcinea lifted her head from the quilt-covered mattress with tear tracks still messing up the fur on her face and making her look worse for the wear.</p><p>“Huh?”</p><p>“Dry those tears,” he said, reaching out to wipe them away with the heel of his paw. “I am not worth your sorrow, Dulcinea.”</p><p>“Don’t be such an idiot,” she said, though she let him do what he intended to do, to touch her. She savoured the feeling of his paw caressing her cheek, a small purr even emerging from her throat unbidden. She reached up to clasp his fingers on her own, and when she opened her eyes that she didn’t even realize she had closed, she whispered, “You’re worth more to me than the world, Puss…more than…more than…”</p><p>She brought the back of his paw to her forehead and sobbed as the first rays of the morning crawled over the bed he lay in. She felt his weak attempts to caress her head, his placating ‘Sh, sh…’, but neither managed to calm her wailing heart. Until he said, as if her world was not falling apart:</p><p>“You remind me so much of my Mamá.”</p><p>It took her awhile to piece together the meaning of his individual words in her fragmented mind, but when she finally did, she gave him a chuckle. “I do?” she ventured. “What was she like?”</p><p>He was silent for a moment, his eyes looking inward as if to search her in his memory. “She was…gentle. And kind. And soft-hearted…with a voice that she can wield like steel when she wants to, even if she speaks them in a whisper.” He himself was speaking in a whisper now. He clenched his free paw, the one Dulcinea was not holding, onto the sheets, and Dulcinea thought she saw something drop onto the fabric and darken that small spot. “I am…a failure in her eyes, like I probably am to you. I deserve every bit of pain--” As if the word itself was a trigger, he endured one for several moments before speaking in-between gasps, “from--from the curse of…my past. I--I brought this upon, upon myself. I do not even deserve to be cared for. I should, not be your, <em>responsibility</em>--”</p><p>“Puss, <em>please</em>.” Dulcinea had been so struck by his words, <em>I am…a failure in her eyes, like I probably am to you</em>--does everything she says to him mean <em>nothing?</em> Does he think her love was fake? “You failed <em>sometimes</em>, but that is not the only thing that makes you <em>you</em>, okay? If your mom was here, I’m sure she would tell you that despite everything you think makes you a failure, that her love for you is unconditional--”</p><p>He cackled, pulled his paw from her. There is no other word for that sound from his throat--it was a <em>cackle</em>, vicious and tearing and hurt. “After everything I did to hurt her?”</p><p>“Yes,” she said, a little shaken by his cackle but undeterred in her purpose, “that is what <em>unconditional</em> means.”</p><p>“Such a thing only exists in fairytales for children.”</p><p>“Then so be it,” she parried without thinking, “this world we’re living in is a tragic fairytale, because you can’t accept that that’s exactly how I--” She stopped herself. “How your mother…the people around you, San Lorenzo, the children…<em>love</em> you.”</p><p>He turned away from her gaze, his green eyes hooded despite the lack of a hat on his head. She knew he was trying to hide the emotion welling up in him, but unbeknownst to her, she was breaking open old wounds with her whispered words wielded like steel, and stitching the tear back together. Healing it.</p><p>And that was how she knew.</p><p>“Oh, Puss,” she said, getting up from her chair and reaching over the bed to hug him. The rays of the sun were now almost touching his paw that was gripping the fabric, now, but Dulcinea wasn’t worried. It wasn’t that he didn’t love, it’s that he had it locked inside his heart, and… “You’re afraid, aren’t you? Afraid that if you love…you’ll disappoint them…”</p><p>He chuckled bitterly. “Well, at least I have never been a failure in the matter of constantly disappointing--”</p><p>“<em>Shush</em>,” Dulcinea said, squeezing him to squeeze his self-deprecating remarks into oblivion as she said so. “Would you imagine I’m your Mamá Imelda?” she whispered after a while. Puss had told her about her before--the amazing woman who kept him in her orphanage and loved him with all her heart. It was all she knew about her, and that was all he was willing to tell her.</p><p>But it would be enough.</p><p>“What for?” he grumbled.</p><p>“Just do it,” she replied.</p><p>He didn’t say anything, but she knew he acquiesced with how his breath had suddenly hitched when he raised his arms and wrapped them around her.</p><p>“I love you, my <em>pequeño</em>.” She pulled him closer. He had told her about that, too. About how his mamá called him <em>my pequeño</em>. “No matter what you think or say, I <em>love</em> you.” Dulcinea had closed her eyes, and the words meant more to her than an imitation of what his mama would have told him if she were here. “It hurts when you do this, you know? When you pretend my love is not real. You think it would stop the guilt. But it doesn’t. All it does is put your heart in a cage. So for everything you have done…I forgive you. Because I <em>love</em> you. But you accept nothing from anyone until you forgive yourself, too. So would you do that?” She paused. “For me?”</p><p><em>For your mama</em>, Dulcinea thought.<em> For me.</em></p><p>The San Lorenzans who have been standing at the open door since gods-know-when smile as the rays of the sun finally reach the two, pouring warmth and light onto their tableau. The children push their way past the crowd with huge smiles on their faces and joined them on the bed.</p><p>Love <em>surrounded</em> Puss in that very moment, and it will take work for him to learn to wholly love them back--but for now, right now, he figured…maybe…maybe. Maybe this time, love would not have to be so painful.  </p><p>As the sun shone upon them all, Puss nodded his head against her chest in answer to her question, wrapped in her and the orphans’ embrace, healing.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>i seem to enjoy writing dulcinea as a crazy cat lady... </p><p>anyways. this was supposed to be just a small "Puss is sick and Dulcinea takes care of him" fic which metastasized into this. i don't even know if it makes sense, but oh well.  </p><p>happy new year, taopib fandom!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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